Bend school system as a building engineer, joined the Army...

November 11, 2005

Bend school system as a building engineer, joined the Army Air Corps just a few days after Pearl Harbor. He had played football at Washington High School under Bernie Witucki and his father, August, was a South Bend fire department lieutenant who died of a heart attack while battling a fire. Like his dad, Budd served for the common good, too. He became an Air Corps flight engineer for B-24s, and in April 1943, he was part of a successful bombing run on a Japanese phosphate plant on the island of Nauru. His unit -- the 372nd Squadron of the 307th Bombardment Group -- was based on Funafuti of the Ellise Islands (now Tuvala), and the Japanese retaliated the following night. "It was about 3 a.m. in the morning, and Vince and I headed for a foxhole near a native village," Budd recalls. The two of them and another soldier were dug in when a bomb hit a truck only about 10 yards away. The other soldier was killed by shrapnel. Budd and Vince were both injured. "In fact, I had to dig Vince out," Budd recalls. "He was completely covered with debris." Budd was hit in the back by a piece of shrapnel that literally cut off his Sam Brown duty belt. Vince and Budd also suffered severe hearing loss, among their injuries. "We were facing each other when the bomb hit, and I lost all the hearing in my right ear and Vince lost all the hearing in his left ear," Budd adds. They both were hospitalized for several days. Both received Purple Hearts. Both were honorably discharged because of their injuries. Budd eventually went home to South Bend and returned to Studebaker, where he continued in the war effort by working on the jet engines. He had married his wife, Alice, in 1939, and his son, Kenneth, was 6 months old by the time he first saw him. "Back in 1942 when I was training in Biloxi, Alice came when I had a short leave," Budd says. "That's when Kenneth was conceived." They had two more children -- Christine and Richard -- and eventually five grandchildren and four great-grandchildren. Everybody learned to talk into Budd's left ear -- although that ear wasn't great, either, after his war injuries and needed a hearing aid. When Budd retired 22 years ago from the school system, he built a home on Minnewaukan Lake outside Sturgis. "And not long after that, Vince visited us and liked what he saw," Budd says. "The next thing I know he said he and his wife, Amy, had bought the lot two doors down from us." So Budd, a handy kind of man, built them a house, too. The old wartime buddies, who earned their Purple Hearts and lost their hearing in the same foxhole, became close not only by shared experiences but by geography, too. "We rarely talked about the war, though," Budd says But there was a bond that went beyond being close neighbors. They had shared a foxhole and barely survived the same bomb blast together. And they also made it through the loss of their wives almost a half a century later. Then Vince died, too, about four years ago. Budd now leans on his longtime girlfriend, Gerry Summey, who is also widowed. "We check on each other every morning with a call and feel very good when the other one answers," Gerry says. "She's the reason that I'm not waiting around to die," Budd adds. He has been told that he has a bad heart valve but that an operation probably would kill him. He also has bad knees and a bad back that put him on a scooter for any trip longer than out to the mailbox. "But I get up in the morning and thank the man upstairs for every day I am alive," he says. Today, Budd's prayer will be about guys like Vince and other veterans who have served our country. Bill Moor's column appears on Tuesdays, Wednesdays, Fridays and Sundays. Contact him at bmoor@sbtinfo.com, or write him at the South Bend Tribune, 225 W. Colfax Ave., South Bend, IN 46626; (574) 235-6072.